Jon Anderson and the Band Geeks: Still Reaching for the Top of the World

By Stephanie J Bartik.

TROY, N.Y. – May 5, 2026 – At 81 years old, Jon Anderson walked onto the stage at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall and immediately erased any doubt about why he was there.

Not as a relic. Not as a nostalgia act. As an artist.

And the voice, let’s address the voice immediately, because that’s what every person in that packed hall was quietly holding their breath about. It’s still there. Not “still good for his age.” Not “surprisingly strong.” Still, unmistakably, Jon Anderson, that angelic, piercing instrument that helped define progressive rock for more than five decades, filling the Music Hall’s magnificent interior with warmth, clarity, and genuine emotion.

It’s a sound that shouldn’t exist, given what Anderson survived.

In 2008, a severe asthma attack triggered acute respiratory failure. Three days in a coma. A near-death experience that left doctors ordering him to step away from performing for six months. Yes, the band he co-founded and fronted, moved on without him.

Standing center stage in Troy on Monday night, dressed in a brilliant white jacket splashed with color and radiating joy, Anderson looked less like someone history had left behind and more like someone who simply refused to let it.

“There’ll be no mutant enemy we shall certify …”

The opening strains of “Yours Is No Disgrace” set an immediate tone: there is nothing defeated about this man or this performance. What radiated from the stage throughout the evening wasn’t nostalgia. It was vitality.

The chemistry between Anderson and Richie Castellano‘s Band Geeks remains one of progressive rock’s most unlikely and perfect collaborations. What began as Castellano’s YouTube-based collective of elite musicians, originally a podcast, later a collective known for celebrating classic rock with remarkable precision, eventually caught Anderson’s attention. Their shared love of Yes material led to a touring partnership that began in 2023 and has since evolved into something far greater than tribute.

These musicians don’t simply recreate Yes songs. They understand them.

From the intricate polyrhythms to the layered harmonies, the Band Geeks captured the emotional architecture of the catalog with startling fidelity, but never at the expense of life. Castellano, alongside drummer Andy Ascolese, guitarist Rob Schmoll, keyboardists Christopher Clark and Robert Kipp, and the full ensemble, played with the kind of technical command that gave Anderson the freedom to simply soar above it all.

Inside the acoustically magnificent Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, one of the finest rooms in the Northeast, the performance felt almost symphonic. Elegant architecture bathed in shifting waves of purple, blue, amber, and green as the music washed over an audience hanging onto every phrase.

The room rewarded the music. The music rewarded the room.

This Troy stop came late in the first leg of an ambitious international tour spanning the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and France. The 2024 studio album, “True,” produced with the Band Geeks and praised for capturing the essential spirit of classic Yes while sounding vital and forward-looking, made that ambition clear long before the tour began. Anderson himself has said of the collaboration, “I’ve got the Yes that I wanted.”

On Monday night in Troy, that feeling was unmistakable.

There’s a lyric from “Siberian Khatru” that Anderson delivered with a knowing brightness: “silly human race.” Listening to him, the words felt newly pointed. Because it is, somehow, still a strange cultural assumption that artists should simply stop creating once they reach a certain age, as though inspiration carries an expiration date, as though passion belongs exclusively to the young.

Anderson’s performance served as a quiet but powerful rebuttal to all of it.

Fans rose to their feet repeatedly throughout the evening. Arms lifted. Voices sang along. The upper balcony overflowed with longtime listeners who understood they were witnessing something rare, not merely a legend revisiting old glories, but a beloved artist still wholly connected to both the music and the people in the room receiving it.

Among those fans that night was Joe Cass, drummer of New Jersey-based Yes tribute Total Mass Retain. He wasn’t there in any official capacity. He bought a ticket, took his seat, and did exactly what everyone else in that hall did: he gave himself over to the music completely. Spotted in the crowd, arms raised during the ovation, wearing his band’s shirt, he was as moved as anyone in the room. There’s something that says everything about the Yes community in that image. These aren’t casual listeners. These are musicians and fans who love this music deeply enough to dedicate their lives to keeping it alive.

By the time the final notes faded and the standing ovation rolled through Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, it felt less like applause for a concert and more like gratitude, gratitude for the songs, for the survival, and for an artist who continues to remind audiences that passion doesn’t retire.

For Jon Anderson, more than fifty years after helping invent a genre, yours truly is no disgrace.

A postscript for Capital Region prog rock fans: keep August 6th open. Total Mass Retain returns to Rock the Block in Cohoes, NY at 6:00 PM. Joe Cass and his bandmates, including the remarkable Terry Dey on vocals, bassist Randy Dembo, keyboardist John Rittweger, and guitarist Ray Matuza, bring the Yes spirit to the stage with a devotion that was on full display in that Troy audience. They were booked back last year before the final note of their first Rock the Block show faded. But that’s a story for another night.

Photography by Stephanie J Bartik.

See coverage of Total Mass Retain here …